Cichlids not working well with Gars!

[screaminleeman]

All the experts said so, but I had to prove it to myself. I have yet to find a cichlid peaceful enough as well as calm enough to be housed with a gar for any extended period or even mid-range temporary homing.

It seems that any cichlid that is non-aggressive, and calm become teething ring nipples for my gar.

My best case scenario for cichlids slightly aggressive to the gars but do not "spook" them into peril, is a horrendous tail-kicking that results in permanent scars!

 

[Polypterus]

But mine do fine.... I have had them together for two weeks...

 

[Sidrock]

I have a Jaguar with my 2 FL Gars for over a year. I added three Oscars to this tank and this has been working for about 4 months. Have not seen any issues yet.. (This combination is not recommended by the experts. I am just lucky, I guess. I would not recommend this combination to anyone else.

Relative sizes of the fish plays a HUGE part in how these combinations work out. The Gars were kept alone till they were about 9-10 inches. The cichlids were always too small to "threaten" the gars while being too large to be eaten.

Another precaution I have taken is that the food for Gars and Cichlids is kept different (as much as possible). The Cichlids have always had Hikari Cichlid food (Bio-Gold, Gold, Excel) and the Gar have had a mix of sea-food. This has probably helped these two categories of fish to not consider each other as competition for food.

As I said above.. maybe all these "justifications" are not the real cause of this combo working..maybe I am just lucky.

Cheers,

 

[biguebs]

I picked up a 8" florida gar a month or two ago, and when I put him in the 180 w/ my oscar and bass (both smaller than the gar) they did harass him a bit. I ended up redoing the 180, so the oscar and bass were in a 55 gal for about a week, the gar stayed in a 20 long during that stretch. I rearranged and changed up a few things in the 180, and when it was done I put the 3 fish back in at the same time. No established territories, etc. I haven't had any issue at all since.

I am currently trying to get the gar onto pellets, we will see if there is an issue when they are eating the same thing. I'm optimistically hoping there won't be.